Cry Poop Drool

Folks, the crap is flying over here. I mean that literally as well as figuratively. Well, I mean “crap” literally and figuratively; the flying part is purely figurative. Though, some measure of the crap surely got airborne— microscopic clusters that lifted off and drifted along on the currents, eventually settling on every surface. Yeah, let’s go with it: Folks, the crap is literally flying over here. First, the Puppy came home from daycare in pants he wasn’t wearing when he left the house that morning, carrying the tell-tale plastic shopping bag knotted tightly at the top. He says he was too busy playing to put his poop in the toilet, but I think he was getting back at me by fouling the brand new days-of-the-week underwear I had just picked up at Old Navy and about which I had been reciting the scene from When Harry Met Sally over and over again.

Sally: We broke up… because he was very jealous and I had these days-of-the-week underpants. …One day Sheldon says to me, “You never wear Sunday.” It was all suspicious. Where was Sunday? Where had I left Sunday? And I told him, and he didn’t believe me.

Harry: What?

Sally: They don’t make Sunday.

Harry: Why not?

Sally: Because of God.*

Getting back at me for what, you ask? For having another baby and loving it as much as I love him, naturally. Also maybe for quoting a scene that mocks god. We’ve got to get that kid out from the Lutherans.

Second (there was a “first”, you’ll recall), the Kitten pooped, and though I keenly want to impress upon you the horror of this particular batch of poop, I haven’t the narrative wherewithal to make it a noteworthy event. You can dress it up in metaphors, but it’s still poop. So, I’ll let it go. You’re welcome.

I got me some employment! Of the gainful kind, hopefully. I actually had two offers, if you can believe it. I mean, even if you can’t, it’s still true. Why do we say that? If you can believe it. If you can believe it… good for you?  Well but anyway, I start soon and I’ve decided to focus my anxiety about returning to work by nit-picking harmless idioms. That, and crying about not having time to do the grocery shopping.

I’m not sure why that chore gives me so much angst, but it’s been a weekly bugaboo since the Puppy was born. Maybe grocery shopping represents, for me, all the responsibilities of motherhood—nourishment, comfort, safety—which gives me a trim little focal-point for my martyrdom complex. That might explain why I eschew frugality at the grocery store; I’m a bountiful mother! On the other hand, I have, on more than one occasion, claimed to hate grocery shopping… Crap.

This is why we should leave metaphors to the professionals. Or, in the immortal words of Melvin Udall: People who talk in metaphors oughta shampoo my crotch.

Puppy’s current nighttime routine is a study in botched mothering. My lullaby repertoire includes Raffi, Caspar Babypants, and the entire Sound of Music songbook, as well as an original composition, but Puppy is bored with all that. He wants a new song, and I’ll be dipped if I can come up with anything other than religious songs. Amazing Grace, Silent Night, even Onward Christian Soldiers for Pete’s sake. You can take the girl out of Catholic school, but you can’t teach her to dance.

Buried somewhere deep inside me is a six-year-old Catholic schoolgirl who wants to be a nun when she grows up. I need an exorcist.

After the books and the songs, Puppy wants a story, and here is where the woman I was before I had kids finally succumbs to her wounds: I peer into the dark and pokey halls of my brain, and find only Disney lurking there. I would take a moment to invent a gender-bending twist to the conventional tales, but Puppy wants a story right now and before I know it, I’m uttering phrases like evil stepmother, fairy godmother, or—oh, the humanity—love’s true kiss.

Puppy: Why is the stepmother evil?

Me: Um… maybe she was hurt as a child.

One day I struck upon the brilliant idea of reciting The Gift of the Magi, but that went over like a sack of wet cement. Hair combs and fob chains? Trying explaining those to the toddler-who-always-asks-why. I tried modifying the story for the toddler audience, changing the cherished possessions into crayons and a babydoll, but the ending still fell flat. The moral is perhaps too nuanced for the three-year-old psyche. Maybe next time I’ll try for something less sophisticated, like Noah’s Ark.

Why did god drown everyone who wasn’t on the boat? Why did god make Noah save the pigeons?

*Yes, the Old Navy pack included Sunday.

Puppy crapped in Tuesday.

For your viewing pleasure: Days-of-the-week underpants scene.

 

Ah, springtime. That season when the Jesus freaks come out of their hidey holes and ring my doorbell. We got the Jehovah’s Witnesses as well as the Mormons this year and, being on maternity leave, I was home for both of their visits. Husband intercepted the j-dubs, happily, but I got the Mormons—one scrawny kid and one giant, pulsating pimple in a black suit and nametag. I don’t remember how I got shut of them; I only remember the zit. In retrospect, I think it may have hypnotized me. That would explain the indiscriminate, incoherent bursts of obscenities lately. *

Our car gets it worse. Springtime, I mean. If it isn’t being asphyxiated with cherry blossoms and crow poop, it’s being pelted by pea-sized hail from rogue storms. One rolled through here yesterday and put on quite a show. Upon seeing the hail accumulate on the race track by our house, Puppy helpfully observed that elephants can’t ice skate… because they don’t have skates.

I don’t make the non sequiturs; I just report ‘em.

Puppy has taken to calling the Kitten “Lulu,” and it just might stick. It’s rolls off the tongue more easily than “albatross,” which is what I’ve taken to calling her. She won’t let me put her down—pretty much ever. I have to do everything one-handed, including blogging. I’m like that guy from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, only not so heroic.

Of course, I mean albatross in its more endearing sense, right? The Kitten is actually quite charming much of the time. Even her gas is cute. That’s what I’ll miss most, when we win the lottery and buy a bigger house and Kitten gets her own room and finally moves out of ours: falling asleep to the dulcet sound of my baby farting in her bed.

Puppy has created some new entries for my file, Babes, Out of the Mouths of:

• Bazonga Bee (garbanzo beans)
• L P Q R M N O T (REI)

Why are preschool schedules insane? They’re like three hours a day, three days a week—and if you need the kids to stay longer, you can sign them up for After-School Care, which begins at 1:00, leaving a one-hour gap over lunch, during which time your child can forage among the bushes that line the highway. The kid mustn’t stay at the school longer than four hours, which includes the three hours of preschool, but not the lunch hour, so you can have one additional hour, but only on the days you’re fulfilling your monthly volunteer hours.

What’s that? You’re a working mom? I’m sorry—I don’t understand: wahrkeen mahm? Never heard of ‘em.

Don’t worry—it’ll get loads easier when they’re in elementary school. Which starts at 7:30 and ends at 2:30. So the kids can get back to the farm for plowing. What’s that? You don’t farm? Oh, ranching then—they can get back in time for the calving.

*Notably, I kept the swearing in check when the Mormons came knocking. I used to keep a hand-lettered poster-board sign by the door for just such visits. It read, “Go Home You Bible-Thumping Monomaniacs.” I made the sign back in 1988 when The Last Temptation of Christ opened and my best friend and I went down to a local theater to protest the protesters. I drove while she leaned out the passenger-side window and flapped the sign. We were total chicken shits; we only showed the sign when the car was in motion. When we came to a stop—which was often, as the area was crawling with bible-thumping monomaniacs—my friend quickly ducked back into the car and we pretended to be innocents, come to see Crocodile Dundee II.